Deeplinks Blog posts about File Sharing

In DC, the summer doldrums have ended, and Congress has begun a flurry of activity. Legislators are in the midst of considering several important bills:

The Informed P2P User Act is the latest effort from Rep. Mary Bono Mack, who in 1998 gave us the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. The bill is ostensibly aimed at protecting users of peer-to-peer file-sharing software from accidentally sharing their private information. Unfortunately, it takes a paternalistic approach that assumes that more pop-up warnings and FTC enforcement actions will somehow stop users from misconfiguring their software. Public Knowledge has the details. The House is due to vote on it soon; let's hope they send it back to committee for refinement.

The UK government still seems unsure as to whether it's a good idea to punish those accused of illegal downloading by cutting off Internet access for entire households, saying it wants to "support" the music industry. But now it seems a coalition of the actual British musicians, songwriters and producers behind the music don't want "support" of this kind, and view this sort of draconian policy as "extraordinarily negative."

Thankfully, there are some people in the UK who think this sort of draconian policy is a terrible idea, and are taking a stand against it — namely, the British music community.

Before legislation becomes law in France, it must pass the muster of the Conseil Constitutionnel: a group of jurists who determine whether each new law is consistent with the principles and rules of France's constitution.

For the passage of Sarkozy's unpopular "three strikes" HADOPI legislation, the approval of the Conseil was the final hurdle to cross. If the council had approved the law, rightsholders in France would have been able to cast French citizens off the Internet with no judicial oversight, simply by alleging to the new HADOPI administrative body that they were repeat copyright infringers. These citizens would then have their names added to a national Internet blacklist for up to a year, and ISPs would be subject to financial penalties if they gave these exiles access to the Internet.

For decades, recording artists have lived in fear of their albums ending up in limbo if a record label refused to release it. But no more? Danger Mouse, who broke into the public consciousness with his remarkable Grey Album remixing Jay-Z and The Beatles and went on to form Gnarls Barkley, is apparently counting on the fact that it's the fans, not record labels like EMI, who have the upper hand in the digital age.

Danger Mouse has been working on a collection called "Dark Night of the Soul." Apparently, relations with EMI on the project have broken down, resulting in Danger Mouse issuing this statement:

Two more interesting applications have been blocked by Apple in its quixotic quest to police what users can think and do while using their iPhones.

First, we have Me So Holy, an iPhone app that takes a snapshot of the user and cleverly pastes it over the faces of holy religious figures such as Jesus Christ and the Dalai Lama. Well, it appears that Apple would prefer iPhone users to be a bit more pious — they've blocked the application from the iPhone app store as "objectionable."

Blasphemy, however, has been around for a few centuries, and even Steve Jobs is unlikely to have more success eradicating it than past inquisitors. P2P filesharing, on the other hand, is a relatively new idea, and from the perspective of Mr. Jobs and company, even more dangerous and heretical.